ISLAMABAD: Pakistan's federal capital, Islamabad, has reported its first case of omicron variant, announced a senior official on Saturday, saying the patient had traveled to the city from Karachi.
The omicron variant of the novel coronavirus was first detected in South Africa last month and turned out to be highly transmissible. Within a few weeks of its discovery, it spread across nearly 90 countries in the world.
Media reports also indicated it was causing severe coronavirus infection among young people.
Pakistan reported its first omicron case in Karachi on December 13, though many other people were suspected to have contracted the variant in other places in the country like Balochistan.
"First case of #OmicronVariant detected in Islamabad," announced the city's deputy commissioner Muhammed Hamza Shafqaat on Twitter. "The patient has travel history from Karachi. We are tracing all his contacts now."
Shafqaat urged people to get vaccinated and follow the "SOPs," or officially prescribed health protection protocols such as the use of face masks.
Last week, the country's planning minister Asad Umar also requested eligible Pakistani nationals to get themselves vaccinated after the emergence of omicron cases in the country.
He noted the spread of the new variant across the world had made it "even more urgent" to increase the pace of Pakistan's official vaccination campaign.
According to an AFP story, over 4,500 flights were cancelled around the world by Saturday and thousands more were delayed as the omicron variant disrupted holiday travel around Christmas day.
Amid the surge of new omicron cases, British pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca quoted a study carried out by the University of Oxford on Thursday that confirmed a third shot of its COVID-19 vaccine was effectively neutralizing the coronavirus disease caused by the new virus variant.
